Machinist latency issues need recognition akin to Ninja

[Kitfox]

To avoid ranting without improvement suggestions, I thought I'd go over the suggestions that were compiled in the pre-release media tour reaction thread.

Analyzing the problem

First let's examine the problem and its components

1. Heat Blast has a 1.5 second gcd
2. Heat Blast reduces Gauss Round and Ricochet cooldowns enough that weaving between Heat Blasts is mandatory
3. Between each gcd and ogcd action there's an estimated 0.70s animation lock + increased delay from latency

To reiterate: Weaving between Heat Blasts is mandatory because of the cooldown reduction effect on Heat Blast, this is why Auto Crossbow is less of an issue even though it has the same short recast time. Weaving between the 1.5s gcds is an issue because of the animation locks imposed on these abilities. The exact animation lock time is hard to pinpoint because of the latency factors involved, but usually in theorycrafting circles they're estimated to be roughly 0.70s long + any latency factors. That means even at ping as low as 50 ms, that leaves exactly zero room between Heat Blasts with one ogcd weaved between them.

This is an obvious problem for a game that has been claimed to be playable at 200 ms in the past as that would stretch the 1.5s gcd into a 1.8s one, in other words, induce 0.3s of gcd clipping. Hypercharge is used 3 to 4 times every 2 minutes, with 2 mandatory weaves in each one, with each causing 0.3s clipping that would add up to a total of 1.2-1.8s gcd clipping. Assuming the lost gcd is a heated shot, the loss is somewhere between 190-290 potency every 2 minutes. And this is when minimizing the effects by only weaving twice.

The job starts off with only 2 Gauss Round and Ricochet charges, which means 4 weaves are mandatory to avoid overcapping. If the original intent of the design was to weave between every Heat Blast, something you might want to do to maximize gains from raid buffs anyway, 200 ms latency would result in 1.5s gcd delay every Hypercharge, or 4.5-6.0s delay over 2 minutes. That's almost 3 whole gcds lost, a sign of an incredible design flaw.

Fixing the problem

As shown in the list above, this is a compound problem with three clear components. Fixing any one of these points would fix the problem as a whole, or at least alleviate the effects. This gives us 3 clear avenues to fix the issue. Next, let's examine some possible suggestions to fix each component.

Change Heat Blast recast from 1.5 seconds to 2.0 or 2.5 seconds

With a recast of 2 seconds, the gcd would allow comfortable single weaving practically any latency without allowing double weaves. This would require extending Hypercharge and Wildfire durations to retain same gcd amounts and some adjustments to the overall rotation might be necessary to accommodate the longer Hypercharges. The downside would be a slower rotation, which might not be as exciting for those that had no latency problems.

If the recast was a normal 2.5 second gcd, then double weaving would be possible. This might be preferable to keep the feeling of fast rotation since more actions can be packed within shorter time than with 2.0s single weaves. This would allow room for roughly 183 ms latency, though the room would shrink if skill speed affected the gcd speed.

Change Gauss Round and Ricochet cooldown reduction from 15 seconds to 10 seconds
OR Increase the maximum amount of charges from 3 to 4
OR increase Gauss Round and Ricochet cooldowns from 30 seconds to 40 seconds

All of these changes would have the same effect: ogcd weaving is longer mandatory during Hypercharge. The 1.5 second recast on Heat Blast would not be a problem for Gauss Round and Ricochet overcapping. The downside here is that there are other abilities you might want to use during Hypercharge, such as Tactician, Automaton Queen, Wildfire or Barrel Stabilizer. Nonetheless it would be an overall improvement.

Significantly reduce animation locks for all abilities

If the ~0.7s animation lock on most abilities was changed to 0.5s for example, this would instantly allow 200 ms more room for latency in all scenarios without changing anything else about the base rotation, ability values or timers. However, for low latency players it would allow triple weaving between gcds which could have some unforeseen side-effects. I doubt these effects would pose a larger disparity in performance than the difference between single and double weaving though.

That covers the easy solutions. Other possible solutions would be require a larger rework of the rotation and completely changing how the current job mechanics work so I won't speculate further on them, this post is already long enough. The basic requirements for improvements would still remain the same: No 1.5s gcds OR no ogcd weaving during those fast gcds.

[Kitfox]

With the live letter approaching on the 15th, I'd just like to remind the devs that while NIN is getting latency fixes, MCH has also been suffering for 2 years with no recognition for their latency problems. I hope we can at least get some sort of band-aid fix until they have time to tackle the issue properly after all the dps balancing issues they've got to deal with. After getting some of the band-aid fixes that were covered before, we could go towards better overhaul of the current toolkit interactions, one suggestion below.

Heat Blast Charges, Wildfire stacks
- Make Hypercharge load the gun with 5 charges of Heat Blast (shared with Auto Crossbow) that can be used freely with other gcds in between.
- Make Wildfire count gcds with stacks instead of a timer and explode it when it reaches the desired (6?) amount.

These two simple changes would allow people to space out their Heat Blast casts and Gauss Round / Ricochet charges according to their latency and weaving capability as well as further emphasize the flexible strategic nature of the job. Drills and Anchors could be used more freely in different party configurations and skill speed would cause less issues with Wildfire alignments. While it might make Hypercharge easier to use, since it doesn't require as tight of an execution phase, we would get another resource to manage while taking nothing away from the currently established playstyle. One could play the job just like they currently do but also be free to customize their rotation to suit their latency better. Potency and cooldown values wouldn't even need to be changed (apart from the 5% buff that all ranged jobs need as a whole) with these changes because they would be more like a quality of life change than any sort of potency advantage.

This change would basically fix every current problem with the class:
- Fixes latency issues
- Fixes skill speed issues
- Keeps job fast paced
- Extra layer of strategy
- Minimal change to current core playstyle
- (Flamethrower still needs a buff though)

I really, really hope we can look forward to a QoL update like this!

[CKNovel]

I doubt we will get a wildfire based on GCD, but that would be nice.

If it doesn't happen I'd love to see some changes on the heat gauge such as:
-Less heat generated, a better reward for Hypercharge (To balance some of the heat generation removed)
-Barrel Stabilizer splitted in two charges, the heat generation&the barrel stabilizer cooldown is often a problem as it wastes heat.

I still don't know if I should waste heat to keep barrel stabilizer synchronized or delay barrel stabilizer to not waste a potential wildfire.

And the automaton queen needs a shorter animation lock. That would be a neat QoL

[Yani-Madara]

With the live letter approaching on the 15th, I'd just like to remind the devs that while NIN is getting latency fixes, MCH has also been suffering for 2 years with no recognition for their latency problems. I hope we can at least get some sort of band-aid fix until they have time to tackle the issue properly after all the dps balancing issues they've got to deal with. After getting some of the band-aid fixes that were covered before, we could go towards better overhaul of the current toolkit interactions, one suggestion below.

Heat Blast Charges, Wildfire stacks
- Make Hypercharge load the gun with 5 charges of Heat Blast (shared with Auto Crossbow) that can be used freely with other gcds in between.
- Make Wildfire count gcds with stacks instead of a timer and explode it when it reaches the desired (6?) amount.

These two simple changes would allow people to space out their Heat Blast casts and Gauss Round / Ricochet charges according to their latency and weaving capability as well as further emphasize the flexible strategic nature of the job. Drills and Anchors could be used more freely in different party configurations and skill speed would cause less issues with Wildfire alignments. While it might make Hypercharge easier to use, since it doesn't require as tight of an execution phase, we would get another resource to manage while taking nothing away from the currently established playstyle. One could play the job just like they currently do but also be free to customize their rotation to suit their latency better. Potency and cooldown values wouldn't even need to be changed (apart from the 5% buff that all ranged jobs need as a whole) with these changes because they would be more like a quality of life change than any sort of potency advantage.

This change would basically fix every current problem with the class:
- Fixes latency issues
- Fixes skill speed issues
- Keeps job fast paced
- Extra layer of strategy
- Minimal change to current core playstyle
- (Flamethrower still needs a buff though)

I really, really hope we can look forward to a QoL update like this!

I beg the devs to listen to THIS suggestion.

These stacks would make high and low latency players happy.

I left Ninja because GCD ninjutsus bored me so much, so please don't slow down MCH. I have bad ping and would be happy with stacks. That way I can use 5 heat charges without worries and won't get bored waiting for the gcd.

[Ekimmak]

So, levelling MCH from 70 to 71, there was something off feeling about the class, but couldn't really put my finger on it.
Took MCH into a Trust dungeon, and it became pretty clear. It's built for people with ping times WAY higher than mine.
And whoever keeps trying to put "weave OGCD into high speed GCDs" needs to move to Australia to realise just how awful they're making life for me.

[Ayanumi]

So, levelling MCH from 70 to 71, there was something off feeling about the class, but couldn't really put my finger on it.
Took MCH into a Trust dungeon, and it became pretty clear. It's built for people with ping times WAY higher than mine.
And whoever keeps trying to put "weave OGCD into high speed GCDs" needs to move to Australia to realise just how awful they're making life for me.

I think you might have meant "for people with ping times WAY lower than mine" since you want low ping response times. But yeah basically, it really sucks because MCH is still the job I'm the most passionate about in the game despite not playing it since ShB released due to my inability to achieve the required latency I would need to play it optimally and not clip myself into oblivion.

Now I'm in a weird spot where I cant get that enthusiastic about anything in terms of new fight releases because no matter how good the fight design is I know I wont be playing the job I want to be playing.

[Malpercios]

Ping issues have plagued the job even since when rapid fire was a thing. Nonetheless, it's sad to see not even an acknowledgement after all these years. I was the one to ask yoship the question about ping for MCH during Fanfest, or at least a very similar question was asked as both the question and myself live in the same area that was mentioned. A huge post was made about this and how some players with very high ping are forced to use a 3rd party tool to be able to play the job on equal ground. To say ping was never brought up as feedback on forums is jarring as its been mentioned several times, even to Yoship directly by MrHappy.

[Dogempire]

Don't forget that barrel stabilizer comes off CD at a time where if you use it you'll overcap, at least for the opener I use that takes advantage of raid buffs.

You can weave it in between your first heat blast, but honestly doing that just feels clunky, especially when you're waiting on a hypercharge window and you're stuck with 50+ heat so you have to think quick about what you're going to do

[Kitfox]

If it doesn't happen I'd love to see some changes on the heat gauge such as:
-Less heat generated, a better reward for Hypercharge (To balance some of the heat generation removed)
-Barrel Stabilizer splitted in two charges, the heat generation&the barrel stabilizer cooldown is often a problem as it wastes heat.

I still don't know if I should waste heat to keep barrel stabilizer synchronized or delay barrel stabilizer to not waste a potential wildfire.

Don't forget that barrel stabilizer comes off CD at a time where if you use it you'll overcap, at least for the opener I use that takes advantage of raid buffs.

You can weave it in between your first heat blast, but honestly doing that just feels clunky, especially when you're waiting on a hypercharge window and you're stuck with 50+ heat so you have to think quick about what you're going to do

Barrel Stabilizer is the least of our problems, to be honest. Instead of using it pre-Wildfire like in the opener, by delaying it until after Wildfire the heat losses can usually be minimized to 5-10 per fight as long as you're smart about saving enough heat for Wildfires. I've updated the Balance MCH guide with a section about it today that should help with it.

[Kitfox]

No mentions of MCH latency fixes in the live letter. Disappointing when they're considering addressing BRD complaints about loss of utility. Are we back at this situation where BRD gets all the attention while MCHs cry in the corner for a full expansion?